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Suspect's mother-in-law sickened by attack

The Lowell Sun

Updated:
04/19/2013 11:34:39 PM EDT

NORTH KINGSTOWN, R.I. (AP) -- The mother-in-law of the Boston Marathon bombing suspect killed during a gunbattle with police said Friday her family is sickened by the horror inflicted by the deadly attack.

Judith Russell, whose daughter Katherine was married to Tamerlan Tsarnaev, an ethnic Chechen who came to the U.S. from Russia, read a statement from inside her home in North Kingstown through a partially open doorway.

"Our daughter has lost her husband today, the father of her child. We cannot begin to comprehend how this horrible tragedy occurred," Russell said. "In the aftermath of the Patriots' Day horror we know that we never really knew Tamerlan Tsarnaev."

Tsarnaev, 26, and his younger brother Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, who remains at large, are the suspects in Monday's marathon bombing, which killed three people and wounded more than 180 others. Tamerlan Tsarnaev was killed overnight following a spate of violence in which authorities say the brothers shot and killed a Massachusetts Institute of Technology policeman, severely wounded another officer and hurled explosives at police during a car chase.

Russell, whose family lives on a cul-de-sac in a wooded, suburban neighborhood, said, "Our hearts are sickened by the knowledge of the horror he has inflicted."

Neighbor Paula Gillette, who lives across the street, said Katherine Russell left for college a few years ago and when she came back she would dress in Muslim garb with head coverings.

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She said Russell and her husband had a young daughter but Russell appeared to be living at the house without her husband.

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